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About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 22, 1961)
Family Weekly January 22, 1961 THE General Mac Arthur Family Man Victory and defeat, honor and humiliation this history maker has known them all, yet he has never failed in his most cherished role as husband and father By n the six-room presiden tial suite of the Waldorf- Astoria Towers in New York City, General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur lives far from public view, as he has I by t M for the past nine years. I jfcjjf fC tne occasion of his ap- y 7?' A I proaching 81st birthday, Jan. 20, let US nil me curiam auu look in on him for a few moments,-the retired, embittered national hero and the considerate husband-father. The MacArthur apartment consists of a living room some 70 feet long, three bedrooms, a dining room, and a maid's room. The MacArthur family has put down roots here and made it home. "Here's where we lighted," the General told his wife Jean that day in 1951 when, after a 14-year absence from their native land, they first came home, "and here's where we'll stay." The furniture is hotel furniture. The only per sonal touch is reflected in beautiful Japanese screens, in the silver vases that are the gift of the Emperor of Japan, in a few objets d'art sent by Japanese friends, and in the gold cigarette case that MacArthur's World War I staff gave him as a token of affection. But the apartment has no trophies, no medals, no military decorations. Living with the General are his wife, Jean Fair- (af 2--. -Lb A General MacArthur leaves Now York hospital ator his recent suc cessful operation for removal of a gland. He is with his wife con Family Wffkly. January 22, 1961 UNTOLD STORY OF FLORA RHETA SCHREIBER cloth MacArthur, 20 years his junior, and their only child, Arthur, who is 22. Arthur is 5 feet, 10 inches, straight, slim, very dark. There, too, is Ah Cheu, once Arthur's amah who has been with the family since the dark days of Bataan and Corregidor. The MacArthur trio has always been closely knit. Once, Mrs. MacArthur told Mrs. Manuel Quezon, wife of the then-president of the Philip pines who had pleaded with Mrs. MacArthur to take her young son and join the Quezons in leav ing besieged Corregidor: "We will stay with the General. We three are one. We drink of the same cup." Tall, erect, alert, MacArthur impresses his friends as having changed little in the past 20 years. In stead of the familiar uniform, he appears in con servative brown and gray tweeds when friends and business associates call on him in the suite. Morn ings and evenings, he enjoys wearing his West Point blanket with the letter "A" (for Army) boldly embossed. He no longer smokes his famous corncob pipe. Instead, he uses an ordinary pipe or smokes an occasional cigar. He eats heartily and rarely drinks. For exercise, he walks up and down his living room for a half hour at a time. The walking serves a double purpose. As has always been his habit, lie thinks things out as he paces. His life is centered in the apartment. Here as """" 1 The General's son Arthur is in the company of J .jStr : 1 lovely Wendy Vanderbilt at a social function. ki; II -:-A? Ti','? (frflLEjfcl V chairman of the board of the Sperry Rand Corp. he holds consultations and committee meetings. Herbert Hoover is the only person be visits. The ex-President also lives at the Towers, but Mac Arthur calls on him only a few times a year. He maintains his old attitude towards the ex-President slightly deferential because Mr. Hoover was once his Commander in Chief. General MacArthur leaves the apartment to at tend St. Bartholomew's (Episcopal) Church with his wife and son, or for special occasions like the boy's graduation from the Buckley and Browning schools. Sometimes, too, he just takes a walk with his old friend and aide, Gen. Courtney Whitney. He Has Remained Vigorous For the most part, the General has enjoyed good health for his age possibly because he wills it so. Even last year, when an almost fatal illness struck him, he refused to recognize its existence, or seek medical help until the night of Jan. 29. Then he was so gravely ill that there was no longer any choice. When he was told that he had to be hos pitalized, he refused to be taken out of the apart ment in a stretcher or a wheel chair. Walking between General Whitney and Dr. George W. Slaughter, he insisted upon going to the car under his own power. Later, when he was under sedation and hospital attendants were wheeling him out of his room, he At homo, the General plays host to a Tokyo lifted his head slightly and smiled to his wife and General Whitney. "I shall return," he said. These words gave hope to Jean MacArthur who had heard them betore. They made up the famous battle slogan which MacArthur had first directed to the soldiers, sailors, and nurses on Corregidor and to the 18 million people of the Philippine Islands when he was forced to flee from the Jap anese onslaught in 1942. The words were also the pledge that helped sustain the Filipinos during the Japanese occupation; now it helped Jean Mac Arthur believe that her husband would fight his way back to health. During his recovery, Jean, who has always "drunk of the same cup," moved into the room across the hall, where she stayed through the three months of his hospitalization. Home Life Has Been a Fortress This has always been the tone of their marriage. With his wife and son, General MacArthur has enjoyed a home life that has been its own strong fortress within any theater of war. These two his wife and his son know what Manila, Corregi dor, and Inchon meant to him. They know and he knows that they know. To each of them, he, in turn, has given a sentimental devotion. This devotion to his son is reflected in a recol lection of General Whitney, a frequent companion, who has seen the General weep on only three oc casions. The General wept when Manila fell to the Japanese and when he told the world about the Bataan Death March. The third time he wept was when his son fell while ice skating and broke his arm. When the MacArthurs lived in Brisbane, Aus tralia, early in World War II, the General used to play a "boom-boom" game with five-year-old Ar thur every morning. The game would start with father receiving a smart salute from Arthur. Then father and son marched about the room to the tune of "boomity, boomity, boom," which they shouted in chorus. When Arthur reached a certain chair, he knelt and hid his eyes until his father shouted an especially loud "boom!" At that signal Arthur looked up to see what his morning surprise was. Perhaps it was as insig- Accompanying was given this dignitary, Dr. Ryotaru Azuma. nificant as a pencil or some paper clips. But on special occasions it could be a new toy. Because this morning ritual was only for father and son, the mother was never present. Her part in the enterprise was to hide the boom-boom presents, lest the too-doting father give his son all at the same time. One boom-boom gift the boy cherished was a tiny American flag, the symbol of the home land he had never seen. The General was named Father of the Year in 1942. In accepting this honor, he said: "By profes sion, I am a soldier and take pride in that Jact. But I am prouder infinitely prouder to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father, only builds, never destroys. "The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life." Douglas MacArthur was as dutiful a son as he is a father. When the MacArthurs were evacuating Manila, he ran back to the family apartment to get medals won by his father, Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, also a famous soldier. With his mother, Douglas MacArthur enjoyed so close an attachment that, when he was appointed military adviser to the new governor of the Phil ippines, he said that he would accept only if his mother, then in her middle 80s, could come with him. Come with him she did. During the voyage, Douglas MacArthur, then 57, met Jean Faircloth of Murfreesboro, Tenn., an attractive Southerner 20 years his junior. She be came his second wife after an extended courtship (his first marriage to Henrietta Louise Brooks ended in divorce). To MacArthur, his wife has always been "my beloved wife; my best soldier." To Mrs. MacAr thur, her husband is never "Douglas"; she calls him "General" or more playfully, "Sir Boss." The General, Jean, and young Arthur have shared difficult and dangerous times, and their re lationship still reflects these ordeals. Once, the General ordered his wife not to take the child to the barber for fear that he would catch cold. But, "best soldier" though she was, Jean defied her commander this time. In Tokyo, the MacArthurs resided in the former American embassy, a gaudy and unlivable estab- his father on a visit to West Point in 1951, Arthur dress cap by the Corps of Cadets at the Academy. Two meet lishment. When Arthur asked, "Will this be a home?" the General assured him: "Your mother will take care of us." During the Korean war, MacArthur's family shared with him the exultation of victory at In chon and the despair and confusion that followed Red Chinese intervention. Then, on April 12, 1951, while the MacArthurs were entertaining two U.S. Senators at lunch, Mrs. MacArthur was called to the telephone. On an Armed Services Radio broad cast, an old friend had heard the news of Mac Arthur's recall because of his demands to attack Red bases inside China. This was the end of active service for an old soldier whose earliest memory was the sound of bugles in Fort Wingate, a lonely frontier post in the territory of New Mexico, where his parents took him as a babe in arms. But, as the senior mil itary officer on the active rolls of the Armed Forces of the United States, a post that ranks all other offices, he had hoped to be assigned duties by the President and to be consulted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When no assignment and no request for consultation came, he felt that he was a resource that was being wasted. MacArthur, however, feels that his warning in Korea that "there is no substitute for victory" has proved prophetic. He believes that, as the result of our reluctance to pursue the Korean war to ulti mate victory, we have allowed Red China to be come a military colossus which threatens the peace of the world. Arthur Won't Be a Soldier In the intervening years, the General's only son has become a senior at Columbia College, major ing in English. Arthur wants to be a writer and has no intention of following in his family's mili tary tradition. A soldier and a soldier's son, the General has always encouraged his own son to be self-reliant. He is content that this gentle and intelligent boy has been drawn to the artistic rather than to the military life. When Arthur showed in terest in playing the piano, however, his father watched closely, and when it was obvious the boy was only an average player, he discouraged pro fessional ambitions. (Continued on page 12) former soldiers, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, informally before attending a While House luncheon in 1954. Family Weekly. January 22. J96I 7
